My right-leaning buddy Mike affirms the legality of the construction and actively wants the mosque built, though he also wonders how long we will continue to "fetishize" the area of Lower Manhattan close to Ground Zero.

This is yet another sign of the disconnect in priorities between the American public and centrist Beltway media figures, who, as John Harris and Jim VandeHei wrote the other day, have developed an unhealthy obsession with the deficit as the number one litmus test issue for serious politicans, as well as a tendency to fetishize bipartisan deficit commissions.